Report of the 2002 Asian Bioethics Association (ABA) General Meeting Held 12:00-13:30, 25 November, 2002, at Seoul National University, concurrent with the Fourth Asian Bioethics Conference (22-25 November, 2002).
Presided over by Renzong Qiu (China) and Darryl Macer (Japan)
Printed in Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 12 (2002), 207-10.
1. Nominations for board positions
The candidates that
had been nominated for the 9 board positions under consideration (2002-2004)
introduced themselves:
President: Renzong Qiu (China)
Vice President for China: Xiaomei Zhai
Vice President for India: Jayapaul Azariah
Vice President for Japan: Noritoshi Tanida
Vice President for Korea: Sang-yong Song
Vice President for West Asia (West of India): Sahin Aksoy (Turkey)
Vice-President for South Asia (East of India, excluding other named regions):
Leonardo de Castro (Philippines) (in his absence)
Vice President for Asian Ethnic and Religious Minorities (e.g. Jews, Kurds,
other ethnic groups or religious minorities): Frank Leavitt (Israel)
Secretary: Darryl Macer (Japan/New Zealand)
2. Constitutional Amendments in Preparation for Approval of the Constitution
The following constitutional amendments had been proposed to the draft constitution, for the reasons of simplicity of Board structure, greater geographical representation and more frequent turnover, in line with Supplemental Provision 1. The draft constitution had been previously published in the July issue of the ABA official journal, EJAIB.
The following amended articles were accepted following general debate:
Revised Article 5.3
The Board of Directors shall consist of no more than 15 members and no more than 3 members from any one nation state. The nation state of each member should be defined by the member on the basis of residence or nationality at the time of nomination for election.
Revised Article 5.4
The Board of Directors may appoint, or authorize the President to appoint, additional officers, sub-committees, executive staffs to carry out specific tasks of the Association. In particular a list of regional representatives will be maintained for promotion of the ABA.
Revised Article 6.1
Officers of the Association shall be the President, seven vice-presidents (one from each of China, India, Japan, Korea, South Asia (East of India), West Asia (West of India), and Asian Ethnic and Religious Minorities, and a General Secretary. They are nominated and/or elected by members of the Association. The President can serve a maximum of two years in office. The Other Officers should stand re-election every two years.
New Article to follow old article 6.3
A vice-president can be elected for a maximum of two successive terms as a vice president.
Revised Article 6.5
The General Secretary shall have custody of the Association's funds, keep full and accurate accounts of the receipts and disbursements, and deposit all money in the name and to the credit of the Association in the depositories designated by the Board of Directors. The accounts shall be shared with all members of the Association every year.
Revised Supplemetary Provision 1
The principles of this Constitution were initially adopted at the Inaugural Meeting of the East Asian Association for Bioethics held in Beijing on the 5th of November, 1995, when the Officers of this Association were also nominated. At the UNESCO Asian Bioethics Conference, 4 Nov, 1997, the Association was broadened to become the Asian Bioethics Association, and several further members were nominated.This initial Board of Directors was replaced by a new Board in November, 2002, at the Fourth Asian Bioethics Conference in Seoul.
3. Adoption of the Constitution
The constitution of the ABA was adopted by the unanimous vote of the participants of the general meeting. The attendees of the general meeting included 28 males and 23 females.
There was active discussion of the revised article 6.1, with regard to the position of a Vice President for Asian Ethnic Minorities. In particular the following two amendments were debated:
a) Whether there should be two vice presidents from each region. The proposal was rejected because of the limited resources of the Association, that meant it was difficult enough already to find an occasion for all the members to assemble in one place. Also the constitution allows for a further six Board members to be appointed who can represent particular countries, regions and interests.
b) Whether there needed to be a position called Vice President for Asian Ethnic and Religious Minorities. There was concern about whetheronly one person could represent all the diverse minorities of Asia. The point was made however that having this extra position would highlight the position of indigenous persons and ethnic groups across Asia, and work for the interests of minority groups.
This article was further discussed by a Board meeting (all the above listed board nominees except Leavitt and de Castro were present at that meeting), and any person could also join that meeting observers were welcome to join that Board meeting to promote transparency. Alireza Bagheri (Iran) attended, and spoke at the Board meeting also, held in the main conference room during a break in the sessions. None of the board nominees had changed their support for the revised article 6.1, and it was accepted, and endorsed by the general membership present.
Therefore the ABA Constitution, which had initially been drafted in 1995, revised in 1997 and again in 2002, was finally adopted as the constitution of the Association. It is printed in full below.
4. Voting of candidates for board positions
Because there was only one candidate for each position, the candidates were voted into the positions (item 1) by the unanimous vote of the members present. This meant that there was no need for a vote of all ABA members, because no other candidates were present.
The secretary said that for future elections, an Email voting system will be used. The vote should be conducted at a time approximately two years from this General Meeting.
Mary Ann Chen Ng suggested that the Board should consider a more balanced gender balance in the future, which was agreed by all those present.
5. Report on lack of representation of Asians on the Board of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB)
Darryl Macer, Frank Leavitt, Leonardo de Castro are on the current IAB Board. Renzong Qiu was a former IAB Board member. The majority of participants at the ABA General Meeting were IAB members, and there were also 4 members present who had unsuccessfully stood for elections to the IAB Board in recent years.
The secretary reported that the 2001 IAB Board Meeting had rejected Macer's proposal of setting guaranteed Board seats for India and China on the Board to overcome the Western bias of the IAB Board. Of 21 members of the IAB Board there are 9 Europeans, 1 from Australia, 3 from North America, 2 from South America, 4 from Asia, 2 from Africa. The secretary reported that the IAB Board had suggested the geographical imbalance in terms of world population could be overcome from coordinated voting for persons from ABA, especially from China and India.
In discussions from ABA members in 2001 there had been discontent with this suggestion, and Macer also reported that the 2002 IAB Board meeting had come to the same conclusion as the 2001 meeting.
The ABA President made the point that a number of IAB members in China had not received voting papers for the past election. This was also reported from a European member.
The ABA Vice President for Korea reported the high degree of discontent about the IAB in Korea, partly resulting from two IAB elections. One was in 2000 when a number of Korean IAB members could not vote because of a regulation involving a three month waiting period between membership of IAB and voting rights. Further discontent was from the 2002 IAB elections when the initial ballot sent to IAB members excluded the Korean candidate, although one week later the revised ballot was sent. There had been no indication from the IAB that only the revised ballot should have been used for voting, and it was presumed that the first ballot was also accepted.
There were a number of further comments. Some participants suggested the IAB name should be changed to WAB (Western Association of Bioethics). In particular there was impatience that despite the conveyance of a high level of concern from IAB members in Asia to the IAB Board, the solution proposed was considered inadequate.
The ABA members were pleased however that the secretariat of IAB was moving from Europe to Asia. They also appreciated the IAB endorsement of the Fourth Asian Bioethics Conference, noting that they hoped that the cooperation that had led to a joint meeting in 1998 between the Fourth World Congress of Bioethics and the Third Asian Bioethics Conference in Tokyo, would continue in the future.
It was decided that the next step in making the concerns of Asian IAB members known to the IAB Board would be for the President and Board of ABA to write a letter to the Board of the IAB expressing the above concerns. A copy of that letter is in appendix 1 to these minutes. The letter would also be published in EJAIB, as well as any reply, so that all members could see the issue.
6. Fee structure and usage
A three tier system was proposed and accepted including the following steps for annual fees:
a) Regular price (US$50 Euro 50 Yen 5000).
This includes the EJAIB journal subscription and free associate membership of Eubios Ethics Institute.
b) Reduced contribution (the amount is up to the member, and is also suggested for students)
This includes the EJAIB journal subscription.
c) No fee, because the person is not in a position to pay the fee.
This does not include a hard copy of the EJAIB journal, but anyone can apply to Eubios Ethics Institute separately for a hard copy of the Journal, to be considered case by case.
The secretary noted that EJAIB is on line for free access to everyone on the Internet. It has been on-line for free and the official journal since the inauguration of the Association in 1995. Until now Eubios Ethics Institute who publishes EJAIB has not received any funds from ABA, but this is not-sustainable. Those present were encouraged to use this occasion to hand in completed membership forms and fees to the secretary.
The Board may approve the local collection of fees, as is done in China for example, and those members who have questions should contact their regional representative or the secretary.
7. Honorary membership of ABA to the Founding President
The secretary proposed Honorary Membership for the Founding President of Association, Hyakudai Sakamoto (Japan). This received applause from the general meeting and was unanimously adopted.
8. Regional representatives
Those present were asked whether they would volunteer to be an ABA regional representative at the level of country, or region within countries or above countries. The following volunteers were accepted. Further persons are also invited to be contact points, and the persons will be named on the home page.
The regional representatives (in addition to Vice Presidents) include:
Nepal: V. Manickavel
New Zealand: Ken Daniels
Taiwan: Wenmay Rei
Thailand and South East Asia: Pinit Ratanakul
Western Europe: Ole Doering
9. Possible sites for future conferences
There are two types of conference related to ABA. One is ABA co-sponsored conferences (There have been five until now, TRT3,4,5,6,7) . The others are ABA Asian Bioethics Conferences, which usually attempt to have all ABA Board members present.
Two forthcoming ABA co-sponsored conferences were announced, and all present were encouraged to attempt to attend, including:
a) TRT8 (15-17 February, 2003): Proposal for an Integrative Human Idea Map and the Methodology of Cross-Cultural and Multidisciplinary Bioethics: Eighth Tsukuba International Bioethics Roundtable.
b) Beijing International Conference on Bioethics (20-22 April, 2003).
At present there was no concrete proposal for the venue of the Fifth Asian Bioethics Conference. It was suggested that persons in several countries may need to coordinate together to gain resources to hold a conference.
10. Publication of the Papers from the Fourth Asian Bioethics Conference
The plan to publish the full conference proceedings was announced, and members were encouraged to submit their final version of the paper to the ABA secretary by the end of December, 2002 (Email: asianbioethics@yahoo.co.nz).
In particular the files should be in rich text format of MS Word, and not use footnotes. Manual endnotes (not automatic) or references by alphabetical order should be used for citations. For example:
Song, Sang-Yong, Koo, Young-Mo and Macer, Darryl R.J., eds., Asian Bioethics as we Enter the 21st Century (Christchurch: Eubios Ethics Institute, 2003).
Qiu, Renzong, "Closing remarks", pp. 321-323 in Song, Sang-Yong et al., eds., Asian Bioethics as we Enter the 21st Century (Christchurch: Eubios Ethics Institute, 2003).
Macer, Darryl R.J., "Finite or Infinite Mind?: Proposal for an Integrative Mental Mapping Project", Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 12 (2002), 203-6.
Any one who wanted to obtain power point files from speakers should contact them directly. An address list of conference participants would be compiled.
11. Fund raising
There was a suggestion from R.N. Sharma (India) that attempts should be made for a foundation or a person to attempt to raise funds for the promotion of the goals of ABA, including the holding of future conferences. Those present endorsed the idea, and suggested Dr. Sharma could attempt to raise such funds.
12. Other business
The members agreed that the election of the President of ABA should be made from all members of the ABA and not from only the Board members.
There was no other business raised by members. The participants warmly thanked Song Sang-Yong and Koo Young-Mo for all the work into making the conference and the meeting possible.A Board meeting was held.
13. Report from the ABA Board Meeting 25 Nov. 2002
Absentees: Leonardo de Castro, Frank Leavitt
All other Board members were present.
Observer: Alireza Bagheri
i) The proposal from the secretary that Board meetings will be open to observers who are not members of the Board was unanimously supported.
ii) The issue raised in the General Meeting over the revision of article 6.1 regarding vice presidential regions was discussed.
This proposed constitutional revision was supported by all the Board prior to the meeting (President elect, secretary, 7 vice presidents elect).
Arguments for a vice president for Asian ethnic minorities:
Indigenous groups are often neglected voices in International Debates in Bioethics.
Asia includes many of these groups, and they should be given a voice separate to the majority voice.
In response to the suggestion to have two Vice Presidents for regions, there are several issues:
Resources are limited so having all the Board meet in one place will be even more expensive.
There should be some limit to the number of Vice Presidents
There is a provision for up to an extra six Board members in the Constitution.
The Board voted on this with all supporting their earlier decision for the Vice Presidential areas, and the revision. The Board accepted the constitution.
iii) The Board accepted a time limit for defining the membership status as the end of June 2003. The secretary would mail all members to remind them of this in EJAIB.
iv) Alireza Bagheri suggested that there should be more contact with the Arab World, and Sahin Aksoy volunteered to do this.
iv) In the event that a meeting is presided over by a vice-president instead of the president (article 6.3 constitution), all vice presidents are of equal status. The Board should agree with this representation.
v) Further matters would be discussed by Email. The Email conversation would not be made totally public, but a summary of the discussions would be published every issue of the journal, EJAIB, for all to see. This was made in the efforts of transparency and unity.
APPENDIX 1: LETTER TO IAB BOARD FROM ABA BOARD
To: Professor Solomon Benatar, President IAB (International Association of Bioethics), and IAB Board Members
From: Professor Renzong Qiu, President ABA (Asian Bioethics Association), and ABA Board Members
1) We are writing regarding general concerns from Asian members of the IAB, and the ABA, to the IAB Board. Please also note that this letter will be published in the official journal of ABA, EJAIB Vol. 12 (2002), 209-10. We would like to have your comments and reply.
2) The ABA Board appreciated the IAB endorsement of the Fourth Asian Bioethics Conference held in Seoul (22 -25 November, 2002). We hope that the cooperation that had led to a joint meeting in 1998 between our associations at the Fourth World Congress of Bioethics and the Third Asian Bioethics Conference in Tokyo, would continue in the future. The ABA is pleased that the secretariat of IAB was moving from Europe to Asia.
3) There is very serious discontent with the IAB Board composition in Asia, as has been previously conveyed to the IAB Board by the ABA General Secretary, Darryl Macer. Following heated discussion at the ABA General Meeting on 25 November 2002 it was a unanimous decision that a letter should be written to the IAB Board, and a response is sought. The majority of participants at the ABA General Meeting were IAB members, and there were also 4 members present who had unsuccessfully stood for elections to the IAB Board in recent years.
4) To illustrate these concerns, some participants suggested the IAB name should be changed to WAB (Western Association of Bioethics). In particular there was impatience that despite the conveyance of a high level of concern from IAB members in Asia to the IAB Board in 2001 and 2002, the solution proposed was considered inadequate. Four ABA Board members are on, or have been on, the IAB Board (Darryl Macer, Frank Leavitt, Leonardo de Castro are on the current IAB Board. Renzong Qiu was a former IAB Board member).
5) The minutes of the 2001 IAB Board Meeting show that the 2001 IAB Board Meeting had rejected Macer's proposal of setting guaranteed Board seats for India and China on the Board to overcome the Western bias of the Association. Of 21 members of the IAB Board there are 9 Europeans, 1 from Australia, 3 from North America, 2 from South America, 4 from Asia, 2 from Africa. Macer reported that the IAB Board had suggested the geographical imbalance in terms of world population could be overcome from coordinated voting for persons from ABA, especially from China and India.
In discussions from ABA members in 2001 there had been discontent with this suggestion, and Macer also reported that the 2002 IAB Board meeting had come to the same conclusion as the 2001 meeting.
The proposal from Macer to the 2001 Board meeting was to have the IAB general membership vote in a referendum on revision to article 7.6 of the constitution, specifically to replace: "there shall be at least one member from each of the following geographical regions: North America; Latin America and the Caribbean; Europe (excluding former Communist countries); the former Communist countries of Europe; North Africa and the Middle East; Sub-Saharan Africa; the Indian Subcontinent; East Asia (Asian nations north of Indo-China); South-East Asia; Australia and the Pacific." with the suggestion by Macer, "there shall be at least one member from each of the following geographical regions: North America; Central America and the Caribbean; South America; Europe (excluding former Communist countries); the former Communist countries of Europe; North Africa and the Middle East; Sub-Saharan Africa; India; China; East Asia (Japan or Korea); South-East Asia; Australia and the Pacific."
6) The ABA President reported at the general meeting that a number of IAB members in China had not received voting papers for the past election. This was also reported from a European member. The IAB General Secretary has said that he will provide the ABA General Secretary with a list of IAB members in Asian countries (from Japan to Turkey) to be sent to the secretary of ABA (Darryl Macer). In particular this is necessary for knowing who can vote and be nominated in the 2003 IAB Board elections.
7) The ABA Vice President for Korea reported the high degree of discontent about the IAB in Korea, partly resulting from two IAB elections. One was in 1999 when a number of Korean IAB members could not vote because of a regulation involving a three month waiting period between membership of IAB and voting rights. This meant a number of Korean members who joined after the Fourth World Congress of Bioethics in Tokyo (IAB4) could not vote in the next IAB election. Further discontent was from the 2001 IAB elections when the initial ballot sent to IAB members excluded the Korean candidate, although one week later the revised ballot was sent. There had been no indication from the IAB that only the revised ballot should have been used for voting, and it was presumed that the first ballot was also accepted. The ABA Board wished to endorse these concerns again to the IAB Board, as some of them may not have been aware of them.
8) We intend to closely monitor the IAB Board election procedure in 2003 and will make public any future failure of the IAB to send proper voting papers to all IAB members in Asia with time for reply, and any refusal of eligibility for voting or nomination.
9) We encourage the IAB Board to take the concerns of the Asian members of the IAB very seriously, and to understand better the world population distribution and the interests of having diversity represented in the IAB Board membership. The current conclusions of the IAB Board on the issue of geographical bias of the IAB Board are not satisfactory to members in Asia.
10) In publicity for the 2004 World Congress of Bioethics we hope that the abbreviation ABA is not confused between the Asian Bioethics Association, a regional semi-global association, and the Australian Bioethics Association. We hope that the 2004 World Congress will be more willing to support applications for travel scholarships from academics and scholars in developing countries in Asia than the 2002 World Congress was.
11) We look forward to your reply,
Yours sincerely,
President: Renzong Qiu (China)
Vice President for China: Xiaomei Zhai
Vice President for India: Jayapaul Azariah
Vice President for Japan: Noritoshi Tanida
Vice President for Korea: Sang-yong Song
Vice President for West Asia: Sahin Aksoy (Turkey)
Vice-President for South Asia: Leonardo de Castro (Philippines)
Vice President for Asian Ethnic and Religious Minorities: Frank Leavitt (Israel)
Secretary: Darryl Macer (Japan/New Zealand)
To the Official
Journal of ABA, EJAIB
Asian Bioethics Association Constitution
The Eubios Ethics Institute is on the world wide web of
Internet:
http://eubios.info/index.htm